


Above the Clouds of Pompeii

by Sneaky_WitchThief



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3, Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe, Brotherhood of Steel (Fallout), Brotherhood of Steel - Outcasts, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Marriage, Political Alliances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 17:52:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19067647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sneaky_WitchThief/pseuds/Sneaky_WitchThief
Summary: Marriage had always been in the cards for young Arthur Maxson.  Above all else, the Maxson line must continue.  Elder Lyons had alluded to it, the rest of the Brotherhood near demanded it, and all knew marriage for love was a rare thing in this cruel and merciless world.But Sarah Lyons changed everything.And today was the today he would finally marry her.





	Above the Clouds of Pompeii

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece I wrote some months ago to fit in with my AU of It Had to Be You. Sarah Lyons deserves more love.

“You’ll be fine,” Knight Danse said, brow furrowed in concentration as he ironed out the last wrinkle in the worn tuxedo.  How the Knight even found the thing Arthur did not know, but the wastelander had a penchant for finding things.  Then again, he had said he had been a junk collector or something or other, hadn’t he?

Arthur swallowed a growing lump in his throat as he took the coat in his hands, running his hand over the fine black cloth.  Stains of centuries still remained here and there, but still, the tux was undoubtedly the best thing he would ever wear.  Carefully, so as not to break the seams he had so diligently mended, he slipped a gangling arm into the jacket.

As much as Danse and his husband had tried to tailor it, the sleeves still fell well short of the wrist and the shoulders almost painfully tight.  Arthur rolled them, trying to find comfort in what felt more a corset than a waistcoat, and let out a cry of dismay as a seam on the shoulder popped wide open.

Arthur had grown much in the days since his half-remembered days in the West.  At sixteen he was very nearly a man now. 

A soon-to-be married one, at that.

Danse simply let out a sigh and patted young Maxson on the split shoulder.  “It’s alright, and oh.  I apologize for this in advance,” he said with a smile, grabbing him suddenly and steering him towards the door and through the corridors, dragging him to the bay serving as the marriage hall.  “We are late enough as it is.”

“But–!” Arthur’s voice cracked.  He stopped in his tracks, but being the twiggy young thing he was, was dragged several feet before Danse even noticed.  The young man pulled himself away, standing his ground with all the presence and courage of a puppy.  He shook in his shoes, his face torn between defiance and shame.

“You worked so hard to give us all this, an actual ceremony.  I went and ruined it.  And, and how can I possibly face her like this?  I can’t do this, Danse, I just can’t do this.”

“As your best man and best friend, I know you very well.”  Danse stood tall, a brow raised as if daring him to question.  “I know you can do this.”

Arthur slumped to the floor, burying his head in his arms.  From between them came a muffled, choked, no.

The knight squatted before him, flicking the young Maxson squarely in the forehead.  Arthur looked up then, in pain and deeply offended, and fell right into the Knight’s trap.

Danse caught Arthur’s beardless jaw in his hands, holding his face firmly facing his own.  Arthur fought fiercely to look away, but the grown man was nearly twice his size and thrice his strength.

“You have fought countless battles, Arthur.  You’ve proven yourself a valiant warrior and your bravery on the battlefield is unmatched.  You’ve stared down a deathclaw and lived to tell the tale.  Why, now on the day of your greatest victory, are you running?”

Arthur inhaled sharply and tried once more to wrench himself from the Knight’s grasp.  Unsuccessful, he stared intently at him until he finally managed to find the answer even he hadn’t quite realized.

“… I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?  Marriage?”  Danse chuckled at that.  “Aren’t we all.  But in all seriousness, Arthur Maxson.  You should be happy, God knows how long you’ve been planning for this.”

Arthur was silent for a long moment.

“But what if I’m not enough for her?  What if she doesn’t love me?  What if I lose her?”

“Bullshit.”

At that, Arthur stared.  Despite their close friendship, Arthur was still a Maxson.  The name demanded respect, which came easy to the straight-laced and dutiful knight.  Profanity and disagreement, however, did not.

“I second that, actually.  I did agree to marry you, didn’t I?”

The voice was laughing, though more annoyed than anything.  From behind the hulking form of the Knight stepped the Elder, or in the eyes of a stunned Arthur, an angel.

Though she looked more Sarah than Elder Lyons, it was no Sarah the Brotherhood had ever seen.  Dressed uncharacteristically in a clumsily handsewn dress of the whitest white the Capital Wasteland could offer, she was far from the image of the blushing prewar bride.  The wedding dress was torn in places and tied hastily above the knees.  Her hair was freed from its usual bun, pinned atop her head in a messy cascade of golden ringlets and crowned with a dirty, tattered veil.  She had run through the corridors in these ill-fitting clothes that had long since been thrown askew, and in doing so lost a shoe and half her updo.  Her face, painted awkwardly, was already smeared and streaked with sweat.

“Usually the groom waits for the bride, right?” She asked Danse, panting.  “Here I am, walking down an aisle with nobody in it.  Ran around half the Citadel before I find you both wandering around.  I thought you two had this all planned out.”

Arthur stared at her, enraptured in all her disarrayed beauty, and in seeing her all his doubt was gone.  Indeed he had planned this for some time, for years.  Each detail, each word, each step of their first dance.  He had loved her since the first time he had learned what love was, and today he would announce to the world that he would love her until the day he died.

“Pre-wedding jitters,” replied Danse with a well-natured shrug as Arthur stared dumbly, “I had them, too.”

“We haven’t got time for that, now do we.”  Without a moment’s hesitation Sarah had grabbed Arthur by the wrist and dragged him up to face her.  She stood rigidly then, in her tattered dress and veil, despite all, Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel.  “Well, Arthur Maxson, I order you to stop hemming and hawing and just marry me already.”

Love for her spewed from him then like a fountain, and with the largest of grins he saluted her.  “Yes Elder,” said Arthur, blinking back his tears of joy, and married her.

She was all he saw during the vows, her smile, her laugh, all that he had loved since he had first laid eyes on her.  He drank in her lips, her warm breath, as he kissed her for the first time at the altar.  Everything was not as he had dreamt it, no, in fact all was so much better.  Everything was perfect.  She was perfect.

He danced with her now in a grand, joyous party, the last before the Brotherhood was to return to its regular duties.  All were long since drunk on booze and happiness aplenty, but none more than the young groom at the sight of his new wife.  As he looked at her, nothing existed but her eyes, the feel of her arms on his shoulder, entwined with his.  Sarah was, at last, his.

“Seriously?” Said Sarah after blowing the veil noisily from her face, recovering from yet another stumble. Her feet were more accustomed to battlefield maneuvers than dances, and she had stepped on her new husband’s feet more than once.  But her lead was well-practiced and twirled her elegantly and expertly, much to her dismay.  Finally, she grabbed the accursed veil and flung it from her head into the crowd.  The knights and scribes and squires all cheered as she shook out her hair wildly like the lioness she was.

The breath caught in Arthur’s throat and his heart swelled.  Oh, how he had loved her, how he still loved her.  Each precious moment of their lives together he would burn into his heart, his flesh, his soul and this moment in particular set him aflame.  Overcome with desire and love and everything in between, he leaned in and was promptly blocked by his beloved wife’s hand.  She stared at him, hard.

“You do realize I was going to appoint you Sentinel for your bravery after all this.  But you went hiding somewhere instead.  Is marrying me is scarier than going alone against a deathclaw?  Well, then again, after all this running around I probably do look scarier than one.”

Arthur reached out then to her, brushing back a golden ringlet.  “No,” he said quietly, confidently. “You’re beautiful, Sarah.  More beautiful than I could have ever imagined.  I love you.”

Flustered was not something Sarah Lyons often was, but to such words not even she was immune.  Bright red and tense, she steppes once more on his feet and abruptly lost her balance.  Arthur caught her then and just as he had so often dreamed of doing, dipped her and kissed her deeply, as deeply as all his passion and love had been for all those years.  And into it they both sank deep, deep as the dark ocean floor, lost in one another.

Then she broke away, panting and breathless from it all.

“Elder, she shouted suddenly, in a voice that wasn’t hers, “Elder!”

Arthur blinked back her surprise and suddenly Sarah was gone, as if she had never even been in his arms.  He looked around himself and found himself not in the makeshift wedding hall but his quarters, not in his tuxedo but in his officer’s flight suit.  He lingered, frozen and staring, dipping the vanished ghost of the woman he had loved.

The woman who had been found in mutilated scraps in a mutant hive just days before.  Just days before they were to finally be married.  Today, it would have been, he absently remembered.

Knight Danse stared from the doorway, stinking of power armor lubricant and ozone.  “Elder Maxson, are you alright?”

He straightened slowly.  Each bend of a joint, of his back, of what had once been a smile, was almost painful in its rigidity.  Happiness and the memory of a dream sloughed off like necrotized flesh, leaving in its stead the skeleton of a man who had once been a dreamer named Arthur.

“Yes,” said Maxson, smoothing the creases from his flight suit, his scarred face shadowed.  He looked to Danse, at the weary lines in his face, the eyes bloodshot from an impossible grief of his own.  Maxson, Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel, remained still and showed no sign of sympathy.  “What brings you here, Knight?”

“The Outcasts are moving on the Citadel, sir.  I come as a messenger of the senior Paladins.  They wish to know if you plan to surrender.”

“Surrender?”

Danse looked down, thrusting a fist against his chest in a fierce salute.  “With Elder Lyons gone and no Sentinel to guide us, Elder, the Paladins feel–”

“I am Maxson!  I am Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel!  I will never surrender!”

“Sir, after what happened, we can’t lose any more soldiers.  We can’t fight them anymore.”

“So give them what they want, is that it?” Maxson struggled not to let his dragon’s anger pour forth, he trembled with the effort of it.  He turned from the knight and clenched his hands behind him knuckle-white.  “Let them walk right into the Citadel and all over Sarah’s grave?  Over Cutler’s?”

Danse cringed, his breath hitching in his throat.  It was a low blow, low as blows could ever be, but it felt good to know others hurt as he did.  The horrible, unbearable, maddening hurt that made him want to burn down the world.

“No.  We cannot give them the Brotherhood.  We will never give them the Brotherhood.” Sarah would not have wanted to kill the Brotherhood.  The Elder searched his memory for all he knew, every military strategy, every Outcast report he had read, every battle he had ever been in.  For all this knowledge, he knew only that he could never beat them.

“Sarah, I don’t know what to do,” he said to himself, wanting to tear at his hair, his clothes, at Danse in his grief and his frustration.  Sarah, Sarah, Sarah rang in his mind, endless, battering into him the thought of what could have been.

Maxson looked then to the dress he had so carefully and clumsily made for his bride.  Cutler and Danse had helped him, yes, but the stitches were his own.  Gathered from scraps of the finest cloth he could scavenge, he had carefully made it for her to wear.  How often had he dreamed her wearing it, on this day, for him?  Today, it would have been, he absently remembered, the wedding.

And then Sarah in her infinite, imagined wisdom or some devil or God himself whispered into him an idea so ingenious and terrible that it just might work.

“Danse, prepare to send a messenger to the Outcasts, to that bastard Casdin himself.”

Knight Danse nodded grimly.

“We’ll be fine, sir.  I’ll prepare for our surrender–”

“No,” said the Elder, his face and heart hardened, “for a wedding.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the lovely song and music video of Above the Clouds of Pompeii by Bear's Den.


End file.
